1. Field of the Invention
Computer recognition of text and symbols, including the recognition of traffic signs.
2. Description of the Related Art
I have been working on the problem of recognizing traffic signs seen by a camera installed behind a windshield of a car. The main application is an automotive system ADAS (advanced driver assistance system) that helps a driver make decisions. For example, it can show the current speed limit together with the current speed, it can warn a driver about approaching stop, school, pedestrian crossing and other warning signs. It is important for the automotive industry that ADAS algorithms work on low power computing hardware. There are many algorithms for recognizing traffic signs that use shape and color features to recognize the signs, but the number of operations needed to find these features in an image is large and the resulting detection algorithms are slow. The goal of this research was to find a detection algorithm that would pick only a few areas that look like text or a traffic symbol, and do it within a very small amount of time.